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Category Archives: Listening Guide

I saw a reference to the choral music of Johannes Brahms, and realized that, other than the German Requiem, I didn’t know much about it. So I decided to go check it out.

Whoa. I’ve been missing a lot.

Listen to this Adoramus te, a short piece, reminiscent of Palestrina to my ear.

Brahms was a master of counterpoint, and this is clearly displayed in his motets. I particularly liked Warum ist das Licht gegeben dem Mühseligen for its emotional impact and the precision required of the choir. Brahms wrote many of his choral works for an a cappella choir, which for me, as an amateur chorister, is particularly terrifying.

Brahms also wrote secular choral works, including the Fest- und Gedenksprüche, written for the city of Hamburg when he was made an honorary citizen (here’s a sample), and folk song settings.

And to close, a song to make you say ahhhh. While this folk song setting tells a sad story (lyrics here), Brahms’s setting adds a touch of sweetness. Here is In Stiller Nacht.

Glenn Gould was not only a great pianist, he was also well-versed in the art and technology of audio recording. He was the final arbiter of what appeared on his released recordings. Any retrospective look at his 1955 and 1981 recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations will mention the countless alternate versions of individual variations that Gould discarded in favor of the performances that ultimately were released.

I’m sure I’m not the only one to wonder what those outtakes were like. The difference between his 1955 and 1981 recordings of the Variations is stunning. What alterations were occurring in 1955 that we didn’t get the chance to hear? Some outtakes were made available in the retrospective A State of Wonder recording that included both the earlier and later renditions. But it was only a small sample.

Finally, it is possible to hear them all. Sony has released a box set containing all of the alternate versions that were recorded in the 1955 sessions. There are five CDs of outtakes. The box set also includes a coffee table book that includes audio engineering notes and the score, the 1955 and 1981 recordings on CD, the 1955 recording on vinyl, and a poster. You can see the box set here.

Or should we perhaps trust Gould’s meticulous selection of variations, seamlessly spliced together, as representing his vision of what the Goldberg Variations should be, as he saw it in 1955? I will leave it to you to decide.

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In my last post, I gave you a quick glance at a problem I was having with a Bach piece–a furry problem.

After the cat stopped “helping” me* with Bach’s Invention No. 1, I decided to examine the work in closer (and less fuzzy) detail. I decided to go molecular.

Let’s look at some of the printed music.

If you’re very good at reading music, you can see which notes sound with which other ones, and how they interact with each other. You can see patterns in the music.

But for some reason I was having a hard time. And I suspected that closer inspection would yield more information that I was picking up trying to play it as written. So I decided to take an extreme close-up approach.

I took each measure, and expanded it to an entire line of music paper. I then broke up each line into sixteen segments, to accommodate the sixteenth notes in the music. Each little segment contained a single note (except where there are ornaments, like trills and mordents). Then I transcribed the invention (thankfully, it’s only 22 measures).

When you get down to that molecular level, and you’re transcribing each note, patterns appear much more clearly. It feels a little like examining a picture at the pixel level (and kind of looks like it), but it reveals so much. It turns out that nearly every measure of the invention, in both the bass and treble clefs, uses one of three patterns: (1) four or more notes in an ascending or descending scale (blue); (2) movement by thirds in a scale-like way, up or down (for example, C-E-D-F, two steps forward, one step back, repeat; red); (3) eighth notes in intervals greater than a third (green). And the patterns repeat, over and over. First, he goes up (1), then down (2); or down (1) and then up (2). The simplicity of the movement was shocking. When you think Bach, you think complicated. You think of this flurry of intricate notes. You don’t think of individual snowflakes.

But no. It goes up as a scale; it goes down by thirds. Again. And again. Look, and enjoy the many smiley faces formed by linking the segments to indicate eighth notes.

Now, Bach might be looking down at me and saying, “Well of course it’s simple. I wrote it for my son Wilhelm Friedemann to learn how to play. And it’s only a a two-part invention, not three, or a four-part fugue.”

But that’s the genius of Bach. With the utmost simplicity, he builds beauty. He takes bricks and makes cathedrals. He does the same kind of thing in the Magnificat, in Omnes Generationes, making the simple spectacular. Bach’s music can be enjoyed without understanding the details involved in the composition, but once you see the patterns, once you can say, “I see what you did there”, you can appreciate it even more.

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Every now and then, I listen to Bach, and as the music starts, and I start to hear the melody lines interweave, I think, “You know, I think I’m starting to get this.” And then Bach throws in three more lines, ramps up the speed, and I realize something:

I’m not even close.

It’s very much the same feeling you might get when you’re learning a foreign language, and you decide to test your newfound skill with a native speaker. And your methodical elementary-school-level bid is met joyfully with a flood of fluency, the torrent of a mountain stream, water flowing over and around rocks, streams combining in ways that leave one wondering where one begins and another ends. Itisveryhardtounderstandwhenyoudon’tknowwherethewordsactuallyend.

The same goes for Bach. When those melodic lines start to intertwine, you can try to follow them, and you catch a glimpse of one every now and then as it goes by, but it is really tough to grasp everything that is going on.

I was listening to Bach’s Keyboard Concerto No. 1 (BWV 1052), and immediately had to listen to it again to try to figure out what was going on, it was so good. The first movement begins simply enough as Bach states his theme. Ah, but then, the keyboard and orchestra begin stating the theme individually, and the keyboard adds a rippling line, and here the water image is particularly apt, as the strings and keyboard take turns surging forward then receding. If you want to hear it and follow the score, you can do so here.

Another fascinating video puts the keyboard in a more prominent role, this time with Glenn Gould at piano and Leonard Bernstein conducting. The performance begins at 5:08, but Bernstein’s introductory remarks about the performance of music that bears few interpretative markings may be of interest as well.

Ok, so now we reach the second movement. And one would expect the same sort of interplay of instruments and lines. You know, predicting, because you’re starting to get this.

Not even close.

Bach pulls the rug out from under your feet, beginning the second movement with an extended statement, everyone playing the same note (within the particular octave their instrument plays). It then develops into a thought-filled, deeply expressive, one might even say somber, melody.

The liveliness of the first movement returns in the third movement, and it is classic Bach.

And yet.

There are moments, something in the strings, that seems to reach forward in time toward the Classical era.

And that’s the stunning thing with Bach. Every now and then, you come across a phrase, and there is foreshadowing of music yet to come. It’s there, little glimpses of the future, and yet, it’s undeniably Bach.

One more thing. Here’s the kicker about the keyboard concerto. Most experts say that he put it together from earlier works, probably a violin concerto, judging by the violin-like features, and there’s some direct copying from earlier cantatas.

As stunning as it is, it’s just a reworking of stuff he already wrote.

Tapping my toes to
Some lively jazzy music
Really makes my day.
So who wrote this piece?
Dmitri Shostakovich.
Wait…what?! Believe it!

I was streaming some classical music, probably Bach, and all of a sudden, I realized I was listening to some jazz-like music, probably 1930s vintage, judging from the sound of it. What was this? Shostakovich Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 1. What?! And then the Hawaiian guitar came in. Mind blown.

Better known for his symphonies and film music (and operas), Dmitri Shostakovich also wrote two jazz suites. The first was written in 1934, and the second in 1938 for the Soviet Union’s new State Jazz Orchestra. Each of the suites has three movements. The first has a waltz, polka, and foxtrot; the second a scherzo, lullaby, and serenade.

What can you do when
Music gets stuck in your head?
I guess it depends.

If it’s some horrid
Tune, ill conceived or performed,
You must replace it.

But a fine tune can
Resonate through the day, a
Personal soundtrack.

It’s happened to all of us: something sparks the memory of a tune, or you hear a snippet on the radio, or from a passing car.

And suddenly it’s stuck, your brain rehearsing the notes in an infinite loop. If you’re lucky, it’s more than a few lines.

Some people call it an earworm, a uniquely unappealing term, though I suppose it’s apt if the song in question is something you probably didn’t want to hear the first time you heard it. For me, there is an abysmal song from the 80s that, once sparked, will.not.go.away until I Berlioz-blast it from my brain. I won’t tell you what it is, because that would be wrong.

But sometimes, the sticking of a tune can be a delight, and that happened to me yesterday. I’m not saying I want it to get stuck in your head, but I think you’d like to hear it.

Everything stopped when I played Tchaikovsky’s Romance in F Minor (Op. 5) performed by Joseph Moog (here’s the album listing from the record company). It caught my ear. It stayed with me all afternoon, and I was ok with that. It begins with a sentimental minor-key melody that reminds me of a thought-filled walk along a riverside in the fall, the ornaments glistening like sun sparkling on the water. The middle section is suddenly lively, as if one had to cross a busy intersection before continuing along the river. The middle section gradually subsides into calm and returns to the main theme.

This is Opus 5?

Then I found out Tchaikovsky had written a cantata, overture, symphonic poem, symphony, and two operas before he got around to writing the Romance. But he was so exacting that he destroyed the poem and the operas, and probably winced every time someone brought up the cantata, overture, and symphony. But he kept the Romance, and it is a well-loved piece.

Clouds, no two alike,
Slowly drift across the sky,
A painting that moves.

Debussy drew clouds
In the darkening sky with
Subtly shifting sounds.

He painted his scenes
In harmonies, in music,
As none had before.

‘Nuages’ renders the immutable aspect of the sky and the slow, solemn motion of the clouds, fading away in grey tones lightly tinged with white.1

–Claude Debussy

When Claude Debussy premiered his set of three nocturnes, the first of which is Nuages [Clouds], critics were perplexed. They tried to explain its structure using traditional forms, but the explanations didn’t quite fit. One can imagine that Debussy might have responded, “Precisely.” He was moving away from traditional musical notions and toward something that had not yet been defined, or perhaps could not be defined.

Whistler: “By using the word ‘nocturne’ I wished to indicate an artistic interest alone, divesting the picture of any outside anecdotal interest which might have been otherwise attached to it. A nocturne is an arrangement of line, form and colour first.”3

Debussy: “The title Nocturnes is to be interpreted here in a general and, more particularly, in a decorative sense. Therefore, it is not meant to designate the usual form of the Nocturne, but rather all the various impressions and the special effects of light that the word suggests.”4

Debussy’s music combines elements that are changing, evolving, with elements that remain the same—moving clouds against a static sky, with colors changing slowly as night falls.